Back

First, an apology. It has been 2 long months since my last post. Despite strident statements about how I was going to post every day when I started, I should have realized that studio crunch time was going to get in the way. Perhaps I should have waited until the new semester to start the blogging. Mea culpa.

After a break full of sleeping, eating, shoveling snow and then three days of lottery anxiety last week, we are back, sorted, and seated as of Monday. I am pretty excited. Between my first choice in studio, more and better electives, and what seems to be a better lecture series, this semester is looking good.

I am particularly excited because I have been able to give the semester a real focus. My studio is in Beijing, I am taking Peter Rowe's seminar on modern Chinese architecture and urbanism and I am planning on cross-registering for a MIT seminar dealing with Asian cities in a more thematic manner. I came to Harvard to study this subject, and I am lucky to be able to do so as the lottery system upsets some people's plans. Perhaps I am just lucky to have a focus that is relatively unpopular. My fourth class, a research seminar on the relationship between urbanization and resource extraction infrastructure should be a lot of fun and, though focused on South America, talk about processes that occur in other places in the world. A little diversity never hurt anyone anyway. The only downside is that I won't taking a Chinese language class. I had really hoped to get back on track with my meager Chinese, but I just don't think I have the time, especially as I would have to overload and take it as a fifth class. It might just have to be a summer / post-graduation thing. Oh well, too bad, but I am not going to get a job because of whatever modest language skills I would have developed, so it seems better to concentrate on design work.

That's all for now. I am hoping to cover a lot more GSD and Harvard events this semester, starting tomorrow. Also, rather than running through the syllabus of each class I am taking now, I will just introduce classes as I post work from them over the course of the semester. This is all in addition to everything else I come up with, of course.

Thanks for reading, there will be more to look at this semester, promise!